


I'm Not Perfect (But I'm Perfect For You)

by Fangirl_Goon_Squad



Category: Captain America (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU-Major Character Death, Bucky's Not Home, Creepy Pets, Feels Of Assorted Types, Harsh Language, Hydra, Loki Isn't Locked Up, M/M, No Horses Are Harmed In The Actual Writing, Slow Burn, TW-Snake Farming and Handling, TW-Some Countries Still Eat Horse Meat, TW-Subsistence Hunting, Terrifying Pets, These Jerks Are NOT Politically Correct, WinterFrost - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-04 01:58:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 17
Words: 18,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10980003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirl_Goon_Squad/pseuds/Fangirl_Goon_Squad
Summary: Another WinterFrost that isn't going to turn into a Tony Stark sandwich.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: I'm having a really, really bad day that started around the beginning of March this year and has yet to let up, so I'm kind of in a 'write it even if you know it's gonna rile up readers' mood. Comments are WELCOME even if you just want to say you don't like the tone of the piece. I'm good with constructive criticism.
> 
> But I'm still gonna post as much of this bad boy as I can before I have to do responsible adult stuff like get ready for the 5-hour (1 way) drive to the closest endodontist who takes my insurance for "difficult" root canals.
> 
> In case the usual happens, the total number of chapters in this work, like at least one other of mine, is 17.
> 
> Chapter summaries are song lyrics. All but the first will give me a by-chapter summary at the beginning and that's where you'll find song lyrics and attribution. The first chapter summary is not entirely typical of the choices you'll find in the rest of the work. First up is I'll Get You What You Want, featuring Matt Vogel as Constantine, Muppets Most Wanted soundtrack.

Even when fighting for his life, Loki could not have stilled his tongue for love nor power nor wealth. Talkative trickery had been second nature far too long for that.

“I could give it all back, you know. That is, if you're willing to break orders and let me live. Everything...Sergeant. Everyone you lost, including yourself. All your hopes and dreams made whole and glorious around you, only a snap of my fingers away.” The answer he got told him much more than its words alone.

“You are my mission, and I was warned about your words. I am a weapon, and a weapon has no use for your lies, tricks, and illusions.” He spoke English, but his faint accent was not a relic of growing up in Brooklyn.

The instant Loki realized the true importance of his opponent's weird syntax and guttural accent, he lashed out in viper-swift self-defense. Once his magic had reached its deadly target, Loki flung himself on the other man and rushed them both through a hastily-ripped gateway to somewhere barren and cold.

Now he'd verified _two_ rumors that pointed to some extremely ugly hard times bearing down on Midgard.

The first had been easy. Unconvinced by a lovely tombstone, he'd sent tendrils of that same magic down to read the dirt under his hands with one of his false mother's favorite gardening tricks. The stone was genuine, the stories he'd had to sift out of hard-to-find files true.

Steve Rogers was dead.

And now Loki knew that the unpublicized disaster in Wakanda was all too real where even he had for once wished with all his hurt and twisted heart it was a lie or even an exaggeration. Somehow, what remained of Hydra had stolen back their Winter Soldier and overcome all his progress away from their conditioning; rumor had it he did not know he was the one used to assassinate his childhood best friend by nearly decapitating him with a spectacularly long shot. If his actual firing position had been located, he'd have been up for a world record in distance, but he was far too careful for that. And no one who had ever known the recovering Bucky Barnes would likely believe that such news could be borne without breaking whatever was left.

Loki actually had hoped that targeting a couple of highly strategic safe houses would get him designated dangerous enough to lure out “The Asset”, the weapon, the blank-eyed snarling nightmare known as The Winter Soldier. It had worked, obviously, but that still left Loki with one...minor problem.

_Well,_ he thought as he ducked a brutal swing, _**two** minor problems..._

First, he had to keep his own hide intact until he was ready to make his surprise move, and that meant dodging until he spotted a lapse in defense. Although better known for his magic-based illusions and trickery back in Asgard, Loki remained also a highly-trained expert in hand-to-hand combat, well above average with any weapon, his own bare hands included, ranging from a rock to a Chitauri sidearm. It still wasn't going to be easy, or fun, especially since he now saw the landscape around them was largely hardpack and dead scrub, offering neither weaponry nor shelter. Still, he'd fought his way out of worse odds in harsher places.

Second and much more entertaining, though, would have to be deciding what he wanted once the fight was done should it land in his favor. He _could_ have the most loyal, pliant, lethal bodyguard Midgard could provide, but at the risk of the programming someday breaking down. The resulting chaos possible wasn't what made him hesitate on that idea, however—it was the probably-huge chance of the guard dog turning on its master without warning, and this wasn't the kind who'd leave much to be found if he snapped and caught Loki unaware with lethal intent.

Or he could, once he wore this seemingly inexhaustible bastard down, strip away all the conditioning Hydra had installed; his magic was more than capable of suffusing another mind and editing away anything Loki damn well pleased. It didn't matter if the subject was willing, or even conscious really. And, even with terrible news awaiting, it could be so **very** interesting to see what Hydra might have missed. To see what truly survived of James Barnes.

_If_ anything survived.

First things first, though...to secure his temporary safety when he spotted a sliver of a possible window, Loki rattled off the string of command words that would switch the Winter Soldier's allegiance to whoever spoke them, words he had used magic to pilfer out of classified paperwork in one of the not so safe houses. The very heartbeat the last syllable been finished, the assassin simply stopped cold just short of standing at attention.

“What is my new mission?” he demanded gruffly when Loki took too many moments trying to catch his breath; that had been a narrow miss on getting pretty badly mauled despite the Asgardian's exceptional hand-to-hand skills, and since it turned out he'd dropped them on the dry steppe-desert somewhere in Mongolia there was temperature to contend with. The wind might as well have been a sheet of frozen razorblades even to a Jotun, and the air felt thin in his heaving lungs.

“Until I direct you otherwise, your first and foremost command is to keep both of us intact, alive, and together.”

“Intact, alive, and together,” the Soldier repeated, his grey-blue eyes still blank. “Command is understood, sir.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I Picked You Up   
> Put You Back On Solid Ground 
> 
> (Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down)

Once Loki had magicked them back to one of his own safe houses, this one actually a sprawling French Riviera estate with no close neighbors, the first command he gave was for the Soldier to hit the shower and be thorough about it. While the other was occupied, Loki spent a moment digging around in a closet specifically stocked for infrequent guests, grabbing a sampling of likely sizes. He'd only just finished when he noticed the water was off and he turned to find his new bodyguard standing in the bathroom doorway dripping and naked.

“All right, jackass,” Loki huffed, “there will be a few standing orders. Things that will always be done once other tasks are complete. Is that concept clear?” It would be a while before Barnes recognized this thorny attitude as the stifling of spectacularly sudden, profoundly unexpected lust.

“It is, sir.”

“ **Dandy**. All right, first standing order: you will shower or otherwise bathe daily when the opportunity to do so safely presents itself. Afterward, you will dry and dress yourself.”

“Shower, dry, and dress. Understood, sir.” He proceeded to find a towel, put it to good use, remember what a hairbrush was meant to do, and try on items from the piles on the bed until he'd assembled a couple of sets of casual clothes that fit well enough and was wearing one of them. Loki relaxed...barely. Even in shit for shape as the Winter Soldier currently stood, he had snagged some of his new master's attention in surprising ways whether or not he was dressed.

“Excellent. You will also eat regularly. At least three full meals daily, more if conditions permit. Even I can see your bones getting too close to your skin, Soldier, and what the weight of that arm is starting to do to your spine. You look too thin for your frame from the jawline down, and if you become weakened you'll be no use.” Not a flicker of emotional response. “So, you eat daily while here with me, and at every other opportunity.”

“Daily meals if possible. Improve the condition of the weapon. Understood, sir.” Loki winced again, still not exactly sure why he kept reacting that way but much too busy to consider the problem at the moment.

“When other matters do not press either my time or yours, I have a top-quality exercise suite in one of the wings that you are to use to maintain your preferred physical condition once you reach it. I'll have you an access card in the morning.”

“Stabilize the condition of the weapon. Techniques already on file. Understood, sir.”

“Last standing order for tonight: when I have deemed circumstances to be safe, whether it be on your word or by other means, you will at least try to sleep regularly.”

“Sleep. Understood, sir.”

“Good. Go to the kitchen—I'll have someone show you the way—and eat whatever you can safely hold, then follow your guide back to your quarters and try to sleep. Understood, Soldier?”

“Yes, sir.” Well, maybe it wasn't so bad that his first night with the most feared and wanted assassin in Midgard had ended on a distinctly boring note. He'd certainly thought his way through just about every way the night could have gone _wrong_ , and Loki found himself relieved, when he caught a glimpse of his bodyguard actually sleeping in the suite set aside for him, that the changeover had gone smoothly.

So there was part of his answer. For a while, at least, Barnes would be kept under Loki's thorough control while he had an opportunity to finally recuperate from the damage done by so much cryo, so much meddling with his brain, and such indifference to his actual physical condition. Had Hydra kept him on a proper diet, allowed him enough conditioning time, their combat could have ended much sooner and with the target dying in the dirt. Perhaps, by the time his back was straight and his ribs no longer casting sharp shadows, he would show Loki the way to the next part of the answer.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Can You See Into My Eyes   
> Like Open Doors   
> Leading You Down Into My Core   
> Where I've Become So Numb 
> 
> (Bring Me To Life by Evanescence)

Three weeks later, Loki found himself actually giggling at the news, of all things. Politics had gone mad around the world in response when the Americans had elected a foolish moron for their leader, and Hydra was having a field day...except that they were missing their favorite asset. He kept chuckling at clever innuendoes that would tell the right ears that the Winter Soldier was still at large, condition unknown. To an outsider, those hints were a mystery, but to Loki they made Hydra sound like a child crying over a lost puppy.

Loki knew exactly where that brainwashed nightmare Hydra so coveted was: currently on a leisurely 10-k run in that exercise wing, after which he would take a quick shower and join his employer for breakfast. Both men were discovering plenty in common, including the fact that they ate a lot even for guys their size and were early risers. Loki was a couple of inches taller but Barnes likely outweighed him by twenty or thirty pounds of fast-thickening muscle already. So yes, his “unknown” condition was best described as 'alive and more so every day'.

Right on schedule, the Soldier strode silently into the dining room, loaded up a solid breakfast, and sat close to where Loki was working on a sparser plate than his usual.

“Feeling all right, sir?” Questions were rare, but then again this wasn't the first morning lately that had seen Loki off his feed both literally and metaphorically, and this companion was exceptionally observant whether or not he asked questions.

“I have a decision to make, and it is not something I find myself looking forward to in any detail. I need to figure out what the fuck to do with **you**.”

“Me...sir?”

“I lie the way most men breathe, even you know that, but I wasn't entirely lying the day I lured you out of hiding. I really can give it all back. Everything Hydra took from you. Time. Friends. Opportunities. Lovers. Family. Reality just requires a lot more input, energy, and sacrifice than illusion takes out of me for such workings.”

His breath stopped when he looked back to the Soldier...who, instead of that familiar blank glare, had narrowed his eyes just enough to bring real expression back to his broad features. Nothing about that real expression was reassuring. Despite that absence, the tiny changes to James's voice and bearing still managed to jack up Loki's heart rate; when he went from blank to even partially present in the conversation, he also went from handsome to _breathtaking_.

“Bucky Barnes only ever wanted **one** thing every day he drew breath as what he called an adult in the world he was born into. That one thing was the safety of his best friend. I have been ripping out what I can of Hydra from my own mind every day I have been here with you. As beautiful as it might have been for me to have a shot at a life with Steve, as the friends we had always been, the brothers our hearts chose for us, and the lovers I wanted to make us, that time is gone. Bringing it back when it was clearly not meant to be, live or false, would tear away any meaning such a life might have. I am better off at your side, with standing orders and duty to uphold, the things I truly understand now. Hydra may have taken away the life I thought was my destiny, but every day you keep me from them I grow in other directions. Sir.”

By the time the Soldier had cleared his plate and left without a word to do his morning patrol of the grounds, his eyes were blank again and he answered all questions with a yes, a no, or a request for clarification. As if perhaps that conversation over breakfast had never happened. As if perhaps the Soldier had been distracted just long enough for whatever else lived behind those lovely grey-blue eyes to get a few words in edgewise, as some Midgardians liked to say.

It took Loki several days just to come to terms with the idea that not only was there something very human left in Barnes, whatever that something was acted with free will...and responded to Loki as if it found him **quite** interesting. Perhaps even...appealing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're Like A Dagger  
> Stick Me In The Heart  
> And Taste The Blood From My Blade 
> 
> (Close My Eyes Forever by Lita Ford & Ozzy)

“I never knew you were such a _stabby_ little son of a bitch,” the Winter Soldier told his boss admiringly, startling the other man because any shade of emotion from him was still a rare thing. James had grown by leaps and bounds, but was still reticent at his best and locked down like an electromagnetic bank vault the rest of his days. They'd been returning from one of Loki's business errands when a Hydra team sent to extract his bodyguard had launched a comically ineffective attack.

“Hiding a knife up a sleeve is easy; hiding one in your jewelry and watching for a place to plant it in someone's back can be quite a fun hobby if you can afford the adornments,” Loki parried. Both were grinning, bloody, and barely winded despite the nine corpses in their immediate wake. “I've been doing it since my balls dropped, and I'm a lot older than you. Your skills aren't lacking, I must say, for all the brevity of your lifetime. Not at all lacking in close quarters, or anything else I think I've seen of you so far.”

For a swift second, the Winter Soldier slipped away and whoever he was turning into gleamed in his expressive grey-blue eyes and quick little grin over being praised. For that heart-stopping instant, Loki knew the look in those eyes all too well—it mirrored perfectly how he felt when he was learning to be interested in any specific individual, no matter the reason. But, of course, as soon as he reacted it was gone and the blankness back in its place. All hint of individuality or free will erased once more as they found the nearest safe house, showered, and turned whatever hadn't gone bad in the kitchen into a dinner eaten without enthusiasm or conversation.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You Got Sirens For A Welcome  
> There's Bloodstains For Your Pain 
> 
> (Wild Boys by Duran Duran)

Rough hands held Loki pinioned, and heavy feet stood on his toes to keep him from kicking since this team was aware of just how long his legs were as well as just how acrobatic he could be despite his height. It turned out to require not less than the largest six of the best black-ops mercenaries in the group just to keep their irate prisoner in one place. Their mistake with him, even as the leader finished reciting the same sequence Loki had used to take control over the Soldier's life for his own to keep leashed, was trying to silence him with a hand over his mouth. He didn't clench his teeth when stressed the way Barnes did, so he didn't have the jaw muscle to break a finger cleanly—but his teeth were hard and sharp and drew blood easily when he bit down as deeply as he could.

“ _ **NO!**_ ” Loki roared just a second too late, once the hand covering his mouth was removed, spitting blood that wasn't his and still trying to twist his way free while the one he'd bitten swore in a language he didn't recognize offhand. He stopped his fighting when he took a look at his bodyguard. The Winter Soldier stood silent in the carnage, his expression empty...once more, that familiar blank glare sat calmly on his features, making the exile's stomach turn more than a little.

But then Loki saw something impossible...the Soldier's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, shifted his way just barely and too fast for anyone else in the room to see. _“...but every day you keep me from them I grow in other directions. Sir.”_ The black-haired captive had to remind himself to keep fighting even as he recalled those words and began to have a powerful suspicion about at least part of what Barnes must have meant.

“ _Soldat?_ ” the leader of the capture team barked.

“ _Ya gotov otvechat_ ” was the usual reply, the failsafe to tell them the activation sequence had worked, but the weapon said nothing.

A knife buried to the hilt in his chest from the Winter Soldier was **not** the answer the capture team lead had been looking for.

Panic exploded in the room, but none of the mercenary team that had ambushed them as they left the scene of Loki's latest crime made it out. Barnes seemed to take unusual satisfaction in using his mechanical hand to crush the throat of the first one who'd jumped Loki from behind, who was busy as all hell when he noticed but promised himself to remember to ask later just why that particular assailant had deserved that specific attention. Or that _vicious_ fang-laden grin that made him wonder despite the completely inopportune timing just how hard his bodyguard would care to bite if the situation were more...entertaining than potentially lethal.

“Why?” was all Loki finally asked, quietly, when theirs were the only two hearts still beating in that room.

“That's a pretty open question, sir,” the Soldier answered, grinning to bare bloody teeth—he was a biter in combat situations because he knew he could break bones and not have to worry about pathogens or poisons. More than one of his attackers this time were missing fingers as well as the occasional ear.

“Why did you not tell me the activation code doesn't work any more? Why did you stay with me **ten seconds** after you knew that yourself, knew that you can be free in your own world now to hunt these bastards your own way? Why keep saving my life when it's no longer your mission? Why even stay by my side when you know the risks for yourself and not just as I describe them?”

“Men of free will make their own choices, take their own missions, keep the element of surprise in case it's needed, and save lives they want more from than a paycheck.”

Loki hadn't noticed himself backing away until his ass found the wall just a little too far from the door for his usual precipitous kind of exit from such a situation. Tricksome as he was, he had learned very young to mistrust surprises from others. Then bloody hands, one flesh and one metal, had him boxed in, flattened against the wall on either side of his head. “More...than a paycheck?”

“I'd very much like to discuss that in detail. Preferably in the nearest shower, before or after dinner. _Sir_.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes It's Like Someone Took A Knife Baby Edgy And Dull  
> And Cut A Six-Inch Valley Through The Middle Of My Soul 
> 
> (I'm On Fire by Bruce Springsteen)

There were other things to discuss over dinner, though, and as little as he was looking forward to it Loki forged ahead pretending to be fearless.

“Before we discuss anything of importance, you should probably know a few things. You won't like them.”

“Such as, sir?”

“As I personally verified by means much more accurate than easily falsified records...Steven Grant Rogers is dead.”

The Soldier's blue-grey eyes went blank again, never a good sign.

“It...Hydra arranged it, didn't they?” Loki only nodded slowly. “I believe your expression right now to mean you don't want to tell me they used me. They stole me from T'Challa, wiped the slate, reprogrammed me, and used me to hunt down and murder the man who once called me his only friend.” There was no inquiry in his tone, nor the relief he did feel at the absence of memory in this case. _And I always thought I **would** be the one to force us to the end of that line, just not that way..._

“I'm afraid so, yes. Perfect on every beat, even. I actually am sorry for this news, soldier.”

“Don't be. I know my tactical capacities, so I know he did not suffer. It is none of your doing, sir.”

“That offer I made you right before I had to fling us into fucking Mongolia for a private chat is still open...but like all my favorites, it is a double-edged blade. You've chosen to not have me bring him back—difficult and dangerous but not impossible—or glamour you into an illusory but blissful life together. Regardless, the offer remains open, and will until I tell you otherwise. There's a...it's like a, um...well, that offer's _other_ sharp side could cut even deeper than what's already been done to you if you chose to take the flip side of the coin.

“At your will, I can save you a world of grief, loss, and any kind of pain you might feel over his fate and how he shaped yours. If you simply ask it, I can wield magic like a surgeon uses a scalpel. I'm entirely capable of permanently excising every memory you have of Steve Rogers, of the war that thought it took you both, anything you're willing to show me so it can be carved free. Any time you ask it.”

“Understood, sir.”

“Oh for fuck's sake, you don't have to keep calling me 'sir' when I'm not giving orders, you know.” That blank gaze went scalpel-sharp in a single blink. Barely, Loki managed not to recoil visibly.

“For the time being, 'sir' is who _I_ need you to be. Free will is a very difficult thing to learn in my position, and so most of the lessons I still need are behind one hell of a mental wall. If that wall is breached before its time, I can't guarantee either of us will survive the consequences.” Loki went very still; it was extraordinarily rare for Barnes to declare any kind of boundaries. Particularly if they involved free will or individuality, two things he was taking a long and careful time to adjust to including in his thought processes and decision-making.

“Very well, then, 'sir' I shall remain. For the time being.” And with Barnes's original train of thought derailed by the evening's conversation, they retreated to their extensive personal suites to shower and lay awake separately, far into the night.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now We're Spending All Our Time  
> In This World Apart Together 
> 
> (I'm Not Perfect (But I'm Perfect For You) by Grace Jones)

“For once, I'm countermanding that standing order about nudity. I need to see how the diet and exercise regimens are working. Shirts and pants aren't negotiable, but anything else you want to leave on should be fine.” Sure, there had been accidental glimpses across the season now past, but it was time to be sure the standing orders were working no matter what seeing that much of his bodyguard's bare skin would likely do to the inside of Loki's head.

But the Bucky from the 30s had been a suave little playboy in the making, one who'd discovered early on that overcompensating in his need to hide his feelings about his best friend had unlocked a cheerful pleasure in touch and sweet words, shown him how to be a young man quick to find he loved the simple feel of skin on skin. And the Bucky who left boot camp for the front lines of World War Two had long since let the military dispense with any qualms he had about stripping down. Faster than Loki would have expected, the Winter Soldier was standing in nothing but socks and underwear, his face impassive as his 'boss' walked a quick lap.

“Much better. I don't see ribs and your spine's not twisting leftward any more. Time to modify that standing order to just maintain the shape you're in, I think.”

“Sir, you don't have to keep me on those really basic standing orders any more. Did you not notice?” Now the inside ends of his eyebrows rose, making a despicably cute divot just above the bridge of his nose.

Loki backed several strides further away. “Notice what?”

“That I've been eating, bathing, shaving, sleeping, and exercising regularly without any intervention for **months** now. Even on missions, and while you were busy elsewhere. Or that unless I say something like that, you're not afraid of me any more.”

“Afraid of you? When was I ever _afraid_ of you once I used the code words to get my own way the day I took you from the world?”

Barnes snorted through a small grin. “I seem to remember you being thoroughly uncertain about the chances of your own survival in my airspace for the first couple of months I was here, and on the first three missions we teamed on as well. Not without good reason, most days at least. But you don't act like that any more unless I manage to surprise you.”

“You...you don't sound like the Winter Soldier any more. What you say is as different as how you say it, and you don't have a Russian accent any more either.”

“Thanks to you, sir, I'm pretty sure the only part of the Winter Soldier left other than activation codes, hard training, and reflexive responses is the part that is convinced it can turn me back into a murderous whirlwind the thin _second_ I let you release me from service.”

“So...who is left to you other than the nightmare who needs a commander?”

“Not Bucky, and I strongly doubt I'd probably still answer to that. Not the James Barnes who enlisted, nor the one who fell off Hydra's train to what eventually was his death. What I am finding now is a good man for the job of bodyguard to the likes of you. Still a man not that perturbed about killing in the line of the duty I'm given. And once in a while I find I'm even a man who actually enjoys our far-ranging dinner conversations.”

“And which of those is the part of you that hasn't bothered to get dressed again?”

Barnes's expression slipped to a wicked grin even as he picked up his shirt and slid back into it with the grace hardly anyone expected from a man as brawny as he'd gotten.

“There is a part of me that might not mind finding out what it'd take to get me to call you 'sir' in a scream if you have the courage to hear it.” Leaving Loki to mull that over, he slithered back into his pants and just walked off, headed back to his own quarters. And then, because he had surprisingly intricate and long-ranging plans about the trickster, he slipped past all the fairly standard security measures and parkoured his way down the outside of the building.

It wasn't like he'd never gotten a crush on a Midgardian before, including a few believed to be spectacularly inaccessible, but this was the first time he'd been called out correctly as **afraid** to act. It was a quiet, fairly warm night...the kind of night that would leave Loki pacing, fretful, frustrated to the point of yanking on his hair when he could neither sleep nor locate his bodyguard and was forced by insomnia to think about why he was so upset about his unsteady end of things with Barnes.

Who, it happened, was out on the grounds but still inside the property wall. He'd made a little nest about thirty feet up a huge old tree and that was where he drifted off to sleep with a soft grin still tucking the corners of his lips. He had known soon after realizing that he was successfully excising the Winter Soldier from his life that whoever was left found Loki to be _traffic-stoppin' hot_ , as he'd heard someone put it recently. And Barnes knew perfectly well that with their combined difficult histories he was best off playing this game very slowly.

The last thing he mused before sleep actually took him was wondering when Loki would notice that he was being warily, carefully, and very seriously stalked at close range by an apex predator whose interest wasn't about a meal.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well I'm Not Paralyzed  
> I Seem To Be Struck By You  
> I Wanna Make You Move Because You're Standing Still 
> 
> (Paralyzer by Finger Eleven)

Loki didn't notice. He was too busy with his plotting and machinations, and Barnes's only place in those was either at his side in silence or skulking in shadows to watch for subtler dangers. As a soldier, though, and most particularly in his sniper training, he'd learned the kind of patience to play his dangerous hunting game. And so the man the whole world still seemed to think was the Winter Soldier waited, a careful eye on his own behavior at all times lest the minor clues he was beginning to let slip deliberately got too flashy for this endeavor.

He started with his wardrobe. Not the things he wore into a fight or when he thought there might be need of bloodshed to assure safety, but the things he wore when they spent time alone at the Riviera estate that had become Loki's most frequent home base. His sweatpants gradually got replaced with jeans, but when Loki did notice that he commented that it was about time, that he knew his companion had endured plenty of winter and cold but he didn't have to melt himself by overdressing come summer. When summer rolled in full strength, the long-sleeved UnderArmours and longjohns and sweatshirts gave way first to ordinary tees and shortly thereafter to tank tops on the hottest days.

That was when Barnes noticed that the hair he still kept just about shoulder-length for several reasons—it kept both sunburn and cold off the back of his neck as well as offering him at least a chance of obscuring his well-known facial features if he tilted his chin down—was starting to annoy him in several ways. There was the sweat, of course, that seemed perpetually about to break from his hairline to itch and tickle all the way down to the closest point on his jawline and then usually forward to his chin. More and more often he found himself frustrated by constantly having to peel random locks off his face at the least hint of a breeze. Ponytailing it was no help because while thick his hair was also the kind of silky-fine that would slip every tie and clip he tried and for a while he debated cutting it off, eventually concluding it was best left alone for the bit of functionality he was used to. A night on the Internet provided two better plans when he decided research was likely a better option than haste.

The first time Loki walked by his bodyguard's quarters and glanced idly through the open door to see him sitting near a wall with something in his hands, the scene was weird enough for him to stop and watch the brawny man's mysterious activity.

What he had in his hands was the trailing end of a very long horse tail. They lived near an area where horses were raised for humans to eat rather than ride, and after putting in a couple of long shifts at a nearby slaughterhouse Barnes had earned them all the meat, hides, and anything else they might need from the place. He still picked up occasional shifts when they weren't busy; he had no qualms about the nature of the work and was far too strong, quick, and knife-capable for anything else about the job to give him any pause, and it paid really well alongside providing him with extremely good fine-work knife practice. This tail was one he'd waited a long time for, the longest the plant manager said he'd seen in two years, the one James had worked three long shifts without other pay to earn.

The end that wasn't in his hands was nailed to his wall and it took Loki a few minutes to figure out what the actual _fuck_ the other man was doing.

Which turned out to be teaching himself how to braid, rightly figuring that he'd eventually be able to work out how to do the same motions blind, backwards, and upside-down to braid his own hair. In the meantime, however, he'd discovered an alternative that he'd already noticed his employer's green eyes catching on every time he used it. Particularly when he paired the so-called 'man bun' with a small but flashy hairpin and a black tank top. That was when Barnes upped his sneaky ante in a way he'd literally left room for—sure, he really did prefer a fairly loose fit on his legs when he knew he might have to use his combat training. But not every day was combat, and when he was confident they'd be home for a stretch he started wearing his jeans a size smaller.

He was actually starting to think his long-game stalk was a waste of time by the day he discovered yoga pants. Not that he'd leave the property in them, oh **hell** no when the pants could tattle on whether he was even wearing underwear. But at home, out in the exquisite gardens that were still being re-designed for functionality to add to beauty, they made doing his forms and other martial arts practices amazingly more comfortable. And, judging by the look he got the first time Loki was searching for his bodyguard and found him working his tai chi forms at quarter-speed, Barnes was right to suspect that his ass looked _fantastic_ in yoga pants.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere Between The Soul And Soft Machine  
> Is Where I Find Myself Again 
> 
> (Kyrie by Mr. Mister)

“So, you've been here long enough without killing me that it's probably time I call you something that isn't necessarily a synonym for your job. Any preferences?”

“James will do. There were very few people in my youth who called me that, and I don't think any are still alive.”

“Well, James, we need to discuss the next time I leave.”

“How so, sir?”

“You've always been spot-on for business meetings and clandestine ops. This time, though, I plan to fling myself into a situation where you may not be able to do your job unless you let me do something I'm roughly a hundred and fifty percent certain you won't agree to. Ever.”

“What is it you plan to do, and what won't I agree to from you?”

There were a lot of teeth in Loki's grin. “Well, after the business bullshit is done I plan to go out and work off some stress in a couple of the...friskier...nightclubs I happen to have memberships with. I know from your history that you at least used to know most of the major ballroom steps from your youth, but that's absolutely not the kind of dancing that goes on where I plan to unwind.”

“Freeform dance isn't difficult. Not compared to martial arts and parkour. What about the part you're so sure is a deal-breaker? What would I have to let you do so I can do the only job I care about?”

“You'd have to let me tinker with the inside of your head using my magic.” Barnes went blank again, the visible transition making Loki think maybe this time he had been fighting it, or maybe it was just that much more difficult than he thought these days to seamlessly flow from one state to another. “And that is precisely why I don't think even I can talk you into agreeing.”

“Who can you take with you dancing?”

“Marcus. Singh. Orloff. Maybe Robinson too.” But the Soldier was shaking his head.

“In that kind of crowd? None of them have a chance, sir. You know that. Exactly what is encompassed this time in 'tinker with the inside'?”

“I can establish a small but strong mental bond, one that will automatically sense if I feel threatened and which, in cases of close partnership, might eventually enable us to converse entirely telepathically. And that, too, works both ways—I'll have at least a sense of your mood and so I will know almost as soon as you do if you spot trouble from any quarter. It can be undone without harm, but the reversal is difficult for both parties. It's permanent unless deliberately undone. By me. No one else, even from Asgard, could set you free of that bond according to the extensive reading I've done in what used to be my family's library, back when I thought I had a family at all.” There was a long, contemplative moment of silence.

“None of them have a chance, not even together. It would take your eight best fighters to replace me, and I doubt even you can take an entourage that big into a members-only club. You do whatever it is you do...just remember that if it goes horribly awry I'm **extremely** likely to attempt to kill you myself.”

“And most likely succeed,” Loki snorted, trying to hide his tensions. “When we first met I strongly debated killing you myself so there could never be a chance of you turning on me. Because I still believe if you have the advantage of surprise you'll have very little trouble maiming me at the very least.”

“Tactically, that would have been the wiser choice. Instead you chose to keep me for your own despite the risk. Why?”

“First, there is no better bodyguard in your entire Realm. Later because I saw you changing things your own way, in your own time. I'm cursed with patience to match my curiosity. Why did you not bolt, with or without killing me, the day you let me see that the activation code I used no longer works? Why would you ignore the kind of freedom you more or less **did** give up your own life in war to ensure for others?”

“I've never had a boss before, sir. Only handlers answering to masters. The difference is _profound_. When your standing orders gave me the freedom to look, I found in myself a man not as ready to die as I'd thought I was for a very long time. I also found a man profoundly uncertain he would have any other place in the wide world to truly fit into. Watching you since then has taught me much, including when you can be trusted. So do whatever it is you do. I do enjoy having a job I understand, and I definitely do not enjoy the idea of you out there with only those louts and morons thinking they have your back.”

He sat very still, silent, while Loki muttered up the spell, filling one cupped hand with wobbly green light that gradually shifted itself until it was a slightly glowing glove. When he put his palms together briefly, the soft shimmer mirrored itself onto his other hand. Barnes tensed when Loki stood up, expecting both hands to land on his temples, expecting it to feel like that horrible machine that had undone him over and over, expecting to hear himself scream even as he waited for the ammonia stink of his own bladder letting go one more time.

But only one hand touched him, cupping a cheekbone before sliding back into the hair above his ear; just barely did he restrain a low moan at the gentle contact he still wasn't used to feeling from anyone and oh, he had forgotten for so very long how he loved to feel such a touch. Loki's other hand did precisely the same in his own black locks even as he too stifled physical responses that had nothing to do with his spellcasting. James's hair, for starters, was softer and sleeker to the touch than he had ever imagined. He muttered again, and Barnes jumped a little at the flicker of a weird sensation whose location he couldn't quantify...heart? Mind? Soul, if he even still _had_ one? Then he was overwhelmed by a rush of nervous tension. Realizing from the strangeness of it that the spell had worked, he just nodded and slowly grinned at his boss.

And felt him calm right down. Just as well as he felt Loki hastily slapping some mental locks on a few spots in his own mind. Barnes followed suit, because it wouldn't do to have such a lovely long slow stalk of possibly the most dangerous game his world could offer get blown by a stray thought his target could now pick up like a scent swirling in a skiffle of wayward breeze.

“We leave tomorrow afternoon,” was all Loki said before leaving the other man to just sit quietly and adjust to yet more changes.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feel The Magic  
> I Feel It Floating In The Air 
> 
> (Rainbow in the Dark by Dio)

Some of those changes were not just immediate but profound. Both men looked a little tired when they finally boarded the private jet, and both noticed right away—they'd skipped their usual routine of meals together since the casting, although both were eating well. Sleeping was another story, and Barnes hoped broaching the subject wouldn't be the worst thing he could do.

“I can't help noticing we both look like hammered crap,” the freed soldier half-joked warily over a cup of very good coffee.

“You,” Loki growled into his own mug, “apparently have forgotten how to deal with post-traumatic stress issues. You dream... _loudly_. Vividly, I must assume since I cannot actually see in. But the spell was enough that I can feel when you dream discordantly, and roughly what about. I don't suppose we could find you some kind of companionship? Since I'm quite sure you'd never let a therapist leave the room you were in, working it out with sex seems a viable possibility in your case. A few nights in luxurious beds with consenting strangers should be simple, and I have my ways of removing memories as we have discussed in the past that will keep your identity safe from spies. Even when you're terrifying you're a handsome man, James, whether you care or not. I could find you a decent match, I'm sure. The...release of tension...should ease back the nightmares, at the least.”

“Wildly unsafe, sir. Even on my better days.”

“So use your right hand, whether it's on yourself or someone else!” Loki snapped.

“Sir...I didn't sleep worth a damn last night either. And it wasn't the nightmares full of war and blood and the screaming of innocents and the stench of gangrene that kept me awake. I'm _used_ to those. **You're** the one who needs to damn well get laid already. You were dreaming so hot last night it was trying to sneak down your spell and change my brain's channel. I stayed up half the night because the idea of you, violence, and sex all in one dream was a bit more than even I can handle just yet.” The glare he got was as green as jealousy, as sour apples, as the natural color of all the visible magic Loki ever did.

“I can get my shit settled after the meeting. That's exactly why the nightclubs are part of the plan—to me they're like a water hole in a desert, attracting all the prey I'd ever need to hunt. **You** need to get a therapist, a girlfriend, hell maybe even just a small pet.”

_I may not be sure about need quite yet, but no therapist will ever not call the cops on me after half a meeting and no small pet will provide the attentions I seem to be wanting. The 'girl' part has always been...more negotiable than you think..._ “In all those cases, we still have the simple problem that I was given a serum derived from what Rogers got, with a little something extra in it courtesy of a mutant human with metabolism-destroying accelerated healing abilities that explain why I eat like three big men instead of the single one I am. Even if I lock my left arm from the elbow down, I'm not willing to take chances on the likelihood of getting distracted and hurting or killing some poor whore with no clue who they were really dealing with. I can tell you that the nightmares all my own have actually been dropping off in both frequency and intensity since the beginning of our...arrangement. Long before you tinkered.” Loki had no rebuttal; he was too busy hiding how hard it was to deal with being told even tangentially and cautiously that his presence in it had done another's life good.

Barnes knew his place during the meetings: jammed into glorified greenrooms with the rest of the personal-security goons. Unlike most of them, he almost never slacked off to chatter, posture, or even take advantage of the impeccable catering. Still, it didn't take long before that certain kind of hush settled in the room, the silence around him acquiring a familiar texture before he finally looked away from the monitor showing the meeting in progress. He scanned around the room and saw at least three familiar faces, men he'd either met while with Loki or before then, men who clearly recognized him even though he had on a long-sleeved shirt and driving gloves.

“It is you,” one man finally said quietly. “The Winter Soldier.”

Three seconds later, the gloves were off and the speaker was pinned to the wall, that distinctive metal hand clamped onto his thick throat and locked. The soft whine of servos still trying to engage, to tighten his grip, was what spoke of the difficulty he was having keeping full control of his temper.

“I don't answer to that any more. I don't even speak Russian any more. Recognizing my face doesn't mean you know who I've become. I can tell you I'm best off just left the hell alone to do my job. If you remember nothing else of me, keep in mind that I don't like being talked about behind my back, I still have extensive surveillance experience, my means are hard to limit these days, and I was born with the gift of perfect shooting aim. And I really resent **any** distraction screwing with my attention to my fucking job.” And then he resolutely turned back to watching the meeting, loosing the other man and not even deigning to look at him again.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feel My Blood Enraged  
> It's Just The Fear  
> Of Losing You 
> 
> (Putting Out Fire (Theme From Cat People) by David Bowie/Cat People soundtrack)

Loki was absolutely dressed to hunt that night after his business dealings were done, choosing to stick with his usual preference for black slacks and shoes, a deeply vivid green shirt, and a few bits of yellow-gold jewelry.

“Planning to be ready soon, James?” he snarked, once again feeling off kilter through that bond he'd woven himself.

“Whenever you are,” came the oh so soft voice, close enough to stir the long hair against the back of his neck and make the short hairs on his forearms rise in gooseflesh. Loki was careful to use a good old-fashioned half-spin—useful for dancing and combat alike—to put a bit more space between them as he turned. James had his dark brown hair pulled into a sleek ponytail for the night and had kept dressing up to the minimal basics: black shoes he could run in, black silk slacks from the same tailor who made his employer's wardrobe or at least most of it, and a tailed silk shirt in an intense cobalt blue that did a surprisingly good job of appearing to wash the grey out of his gaze.

“All right then, the car's waiting.” Loki hoped he'd managed to hide his amazement at just how well his bodyguard was cleaning up for nights out working the party circuit these days; sure, he was stunning even loafing around in sweats, but there were limits to what even the trickster could conceal about himself these days. His immediate desire to throw them in that car's back seat and lock the partition before attempting to peel those slacks off with his _teeth_ was the kind of thing he was starting to have more trouble believing he was concealing well enough.

In the back of the limo, it was Barnes who slumped into relaxation to enjoy the flavor and burn of a very nice scotch. He technically **could** get drunk, but it would require putting down as much high-proof alcohol as he could physically hold, and once he quit adding more booze he'd be back to sober in an hour, tops. Then again, he could feel Loki's empathy for that situation through the spell-created bond. His boss had admitted some time back that only a few things could intoxicate him physically, and most of them weren't even known of in Midgard. Or legal wherever it was they did come from.

James expected the other man to be hard to track once his ID had gotten them both past a velvet rope, and he was right. Except for the part about how that new bond kept telling him exactly how far away and in what state of mind Loki happened to be at any given moment. This early in the night, that meant his boss was on the dance floor and registering as extremely horny but even more confused; anything past that was like a fog bank. Ordering a fancy drink for cover, Barnes scanned the room to find a good viewpoint. Once he'd located it, he stayed there nursing his drink and declining to try conversation amid all the noise despite quite a few people, only marginally more women than men, who valiantly tried to engage his interest. When he saw something that finally _did_ engage his interest, he was glad no one was trying to chat him up or he'd have drawn attention by simply walking away without warning.

Yep, he was right. There were two of them, top-notch among what remained of Hydra's death squads, definitely looking for Loki and probably hoping finding him would lead them to Barnes. Thankfully, the trickster was in the thick of the dance floor and hard to see, so it was toward the center of the crowd that the bodyguard maneuvered until he was in place to cut in. Loki tried to say something, growling his frustration through bared and clenched teeth when the music overwhelmed his voice and Barnes's casual proximity while falling into rhythm nearly overwhelmed his good sense.

_Shit, if you could only hear me, James._

_I can_ , he tried, and when his employer stumbled he was right there to steady his boss by pulling them chest to chest. It took the strength of desperation for Loki to hide his physical response to that contact. _You are being stalked, most likely to get to me. Two, both on this level. The one at your four is distracted by a woman, but the other one's headed this way. Quickly._

_Fuck, too much crowding to be subtle about getting out. I knew I should've waited on the dancing. Got any ideas?_

_Public displays of affection make spies very uncomfortable unless they're as good as Nat, and what's left of Hydra **isn't**_ , James told him from behind a grin that was all teeth and nothing trustworthy, just before he snapped his right hand into slightly sweaty raven-black hair to pull the other man into a deep, slow kiss as the music changed to something that actually encouraged couples to plaster themselves together and move easily, sweetly along. In that moment, Loki slapped a lock on another door; behind it was the realization that he could never again be sure he _only_ wanted to bed James. The feel and smell and taste of him all worked together to put deep cracks in his resistance to the idea that happiness with a partner, in any degree, was out of Loki's reach and undeserved.

Once they stepped apart after the Hydra agent had reacted exactly as hoped and passed them by, it was a matter of a moment for Loki to hide them both behind a light-bending glamour until they could reach the valet stand, where he re-cloaked them until the car pulled up. It was a matter of **much** greater difficulty for Loki to keep his hands and mouth alike off the other man while they were hidden and after they got in the car.

But having been tracked and found so quickly had unsettled them both nearly as profoundly as how much they'd been trying to hide from each other, and once they were safely in the limo Loki directed the driver to get them back to the hotel. With his body and brain reeling, he was rarely so grateful for the VIP access that let the car into a guarded parking level and gave them access to a private elevator. It would take him a long time to realize he should have been grateful to the very idea that his favorite hired thug was still capable of concealing his own confusions and desires.

As soon as they were alone behind the locked suite doors, Barnes felt a flock of powerful emotional responses clattering around the other end of that bond. _I guess I should be grateful he probably can't hear me unless it's an emergency._

_Actually, I can hear you just fine...sir._

Loki slammed him back into the wall, abruptly angry and spinning so far off his usual balance that he didn't notice doing it by hand rather than magic. Just like he didn't notice the complete absence of resistance even when he'd telegraphed his unfriendly intent. “Do not think for one dreary moment of your fleeting life that you understand what I am, who I am, what I should have been, what was taken from me, anything important about me!” Loki didn't have a great grip on his tendency to lose his temper and lash out verbally, physically, and occasionally with his magic any time he was thwarted into frustration by anything. Lately, too, his tolerance for frustration seemed to be in sharp decline. Barnes was playing a long game, though, and stifled his impatience. If anything, he seemed mildly amused at his boss's loss of the platinum-plated control Loki kept on himself almost all the time.

“When did I claim to understand _you_? I don't. Nor do I care beyond certain points, sir. I **do** understand that we have an extremely useful tool to accustom ourselves to using in the form of non-verbal communication we're unlikely to be caught at by anyone I can think of offhand other than maybe that false family of yours. I also understand that you're so horny you'd fuck a **woodpile** if you thought there was a _rat_ in it, and that it seems to bother you a hell of a lot that I might make as good a target for that as anyone else you know, or even remotely trust.”

“And what is it I should be understanding, or however you want to put it, in order to keep up with your Sherlock impression?” Frustration had honed a sharp edge on his words the way it always did. The slow smile that bloomed on James's mouth did settle in his eyes for once, and that seemed to render his boss even less relaxed.

Barnes, still with his back to the wall, used his left hand this time when he caught Loki by his lengthening black hair and pulled him into a leisurely but inhibition-melting kiss. Knowing that unlike the dance floor there could be only one reason this time did not calm Loki's worries no matter how delightful he found his bodyguard's mobile mouth. And he did find it terrifyingly delightful indeed. “Remembering, I think, is how it should be put,” he rumbled quietly when he pulled back to catch his breath and study his employer's responses. “I think you **forgot** that the first time I was honest with you about Rogers, I did use the phrase 'the lovers I wanted to make us' when talking about growing up with him. Consider the era I grew up in, the horrifying attitudes so much more publicly acceptable at the time, when you mull over why I would phrase it that way. What about you? How does Asgard perceive men who aren't necessarily picky about...internal versus external plumbing? How do _you_ specifically feel about other men with direct regards to your own body and the next, say, three hours of your life?”

“How I feel right now is decidedly carnal,” Loki snarled, “but that does not make anything we might get ourselves into a safe situation. You should know that.”

“I do know that. I also know you're not what you look like. You're not just human, not even enhanced or mutant human. We've fought in earnest and sparred for both training and fun, and I have seen you do things even I can't. I've seen you brush off injuries that would've put a non-enhanced human in the hospital for a week, and have no sign remain of them two days later.”

“And what might that mean to you, specifically?” This time Loki's tone was balanced on the razor edge of a hiss. Uncertainty was a distinctly uncomfortable state of mind for him.

“It means,” Barnes rumbled, using the differences in their builds to wedge himself away from the wall, forcing his boss back a step or two in the process, “that if you try something I don't like you certainly have a far better than average chance of surviving long enough for me to get control of myself back. It means for once you can even try to be as rough as you might like in the relative safety of how difficult I have become to seriously injure. It also means that if you **don't** want to end us up naked and in the same bed really Goddamn soon you had better tell me in no uncertain terms. _Now_.” When Loki hesitated, his bodyguard decided to play dirty by lighting up that magic-wrought bond with bright, clean lust unencumbered by ulterior motives, by letting the black-haired beauty start to honestly feel the changes left in his wake thus far, changes that were many and lingering.

But Loki hesitated too long for his own fearful hard-learned reasons, and suddenly the bond was silent and he was horrified to realize he had no idea how long it had been since James had walked away without another word to leave his employer standing alone in the middle of the room. The door connecting the entertainment rooms of the suites remained unlocked...and he could only feel sick to his very core when it was pretty obvious Barnes was gone from behind it. Not checked out of the hotel, no note or other explanation left behind—not even the window he'd climbed out of had been left open to point the way James had taken. And somehow he'd rendered his end of the magic-based bond the emotional equivalent of radio static, nothing but a steady crackle of meaningless white noise, an impossibility according to what Loki had been exhaustively taught growing up in the shadow of the true-born heir when it turned out only one of them was good with magic.

Jim-Bob Marcus, technically the head of Loki's personal security team, arrived just four hours later, relaying that Barnes had called in with the code phrase indicating the boss needed his top shelf emptied for this detail. Singh, Orloff, and Robinson were all there by morning and all claimed to have gotten the same call from the same source. They all found a wreck waiting for them—he hadn't slept at all, and had actually begun to leave bloody tracks in his suite because he also hadn't stopped pacing and had blistered his bare feet in his agitation. They worked in relays, two with the boss and two on intel, until exhaustion finally won out and he collapsed mid-stride. He'd sleep for the next eleven hours, waking with his feet bandaged and the blisters still healing—painfully—under the gauze.

What absolutely no one on Loki's staff could provide was any information whatsoever on the location, physical condition, or emotional state of James Barnes. His quarters in the Riviera estate had been searched to find nothing amiss...and then, two hours later, the search team went back in for a second look only to find every personal item other than gifts was now gone. The trickster and exile could all but hear his staunch heart break between its own beats when a photo sent to his phone showed every single item Barnes had not acquired entirely on his own in their time laid out carefully, the trinkets on a vanity top and the clothing folded neatly in piles by type on the impeccably made bed.

Barely a week later, Sascha Orloff, Marcus's right hand at work, was the one who saw the early morning newscast and bolted for his employer's kitchen where he knew Loki was likely to be savoring about his third cup of coffee since he seemed to have largely given up on solid food lately. Orloff, who filled his immediate superior in by radio while running the hallways at full tilt, also knew that the big boss liked to watch the news in the mornings, sometimes for ideas and sometimes to track his own work. The career thug was pretty sure if the news was on things would be bad.

He found Loki throwing up blood into the sink, spattering not only the backsplash and his expensive linen shirt but the shattered remains of his mug.

In the background, the newscaster could only repeat what little was known so far: the Winter Soldier had surfaced again. The momentary glance he had given someone with a cell phone enough time to capture was as blank as the day he and Loki had met. The Winter Soldier was being hunted across nations, because in the short time since Loki had failed him he'd been taken by Hydra again and at least three more full graves had been added to the debt he was going to owe society. Not two hours later, Robinson relayed from multiple sources that there were a growing number of privately-funded bounties on Barnes's head and that most did not require him to be alive—present and identifiable, yes, but not necessarily alive—in order to collect. Several of the biggest specified dead would be a great deal safer for all involved.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My Energy Is Spent At Last And My Armor Is Destroyed  
> I Have Used Up All My Weapons And I'm Helpless And Bereaved...  
> Wounds Are All I'm Made Of  
> Dare You Say That This Is Victory 
> 
> (Veteran of the Psychic Wars by Blue Oyster Cult/Heavy Metal soundtrack)

“ **Taken**?” Barnes snorted harshly, the faint Russian accent already starting to frost his chilly words again after barely a month. “Why on earth would you think that after what you saw with your own eyes? Was the manner of my breaking the employment contract we had not clear enough?” Loki ducked another swing that would have broken bones had it connected, and knew that he was tiring faster than the other man. The month he had spent hiding, obsessively pacing his feet bloody repeatedly until they had callused, grieving and unable to pull himself out of it, had taken a brutal toll. So had the three expertly placed deep knife wounds he was currently sporting.

“You... _you_ went to _them_? Willingly?” He dodged again, but thought he might only have one or two more of those evasions left before the injuries he'd already sustained bled him dry and downed him at last. For the first time in a very long time, he felt the pull of the deep part of him that was always whispering about finding out if he had fought nobly enough in his days and ways to earn Valhalla rather than the bleak promise of Hel and an angry child of his ruling it. “Why? **Why** would you do that, James?” He knew the truth but was afraid to face it: going back to Hydra's hard rules and harsh treatment was familiar, and even that kind of familiarity probably hurt less than what must have felt like heartless disdain and vicious scorn from Loki.

Just that fast, he was pinned to the bark of one of the old trees on the Riviera estate, the metal grip on his throat assuring his good behavior for the moment...which he suspected might be his last moment. Loki was actually the only one supposed to be on the property this day, the rest of his staff having handled clearing out the buildings, undoing some very secret construction projects, and putting the place on the real estate market. It held all the wrong kind of memories now, and this conversation proved stripping it from his life to be a wise choice on Loki's part, even if maybe it was going to be the last choice he made, the last conversation to flow across his fabled silver tongue.

“A weapon does not need a **name**. A weapon does not need **love**. A weapon does not need **friends**. A weapon needs only proper care and a willing wielder, trickster. All you did was show me where I was needed. Where the weapon was _wanted_. I am only here now because it has been deemed I'm the only available asset capable of killing you alone with or without surprise on my side, and it has been determined that since you are outcast from the home of your birth as well as the home of your raising you are to be put to death as a threat Hydra will feel safe from no other way since we do not have the means to...deport you, as it were.”

“Of all the mistakes I've made, **that's** certainly not the one I'd have picked as likely to be my last,” Loki sighed. He hadn't tried the activation codes he remembered, rightly suspecting they would have been changed, and whatever had been done to the Soldier on his return to his handlers had broken the bond completely so far as he could tell. “All right then, put me to death as ordered, _Soldat_. It ought to be nothing to finish me off, really; I'm half there already on my own thanks to you. I am so tired, _Soldat_...you've finally worn me out to the end of all reserves. Get on with it—a weapon that will not fire when the trigger is pulled is defective and thus without worth, isn't that right, _Soldat_? So do what your **masters** would have you do. Follow your orders, _Soldat_.”

But the Winter Soldier did not immediately continue to tighten that metallic hand that had twitched just a little more closed with each ' _Soldat_ ' spat at him.

“You were not assigned to me for mistakes you've made,” came the uneasy retort—only serious cognitive dissonance would even begin to slow him down in the course of a job these days. “You were assigned to me for the high chance of you interfering in future Hydra business coupled with your known combat skills. No mention of your or any mistakes was made, and it would have been if there had been any discovered. Such information would have tremendous tactical value to me. It would not have been withheld. They do just barely have forces enough to gather such information again.”

“James, the single most **important** mistake I made with only a single other sentient creature was letting terror keep me too still and too silent when you offered me the luxury of attentions only spared my way in all my past by liars who called themselves my family and the disgustingly self-aggrandizing and the horrifyingly ambitious for my entire very long life so far. Every being I have ever cared about ripped my metaphorical heart out for showing them anything caring, anything kind, anything wishful or needful, and I shied from what I wanted most because of them, not you. If I could have spoken to you fast enough...after that night in the club...” he said sadly, eyes starting to roll up as lack of air was leading to lack of consciousness, “it would have been to say things...like maybe 'please'...or 'yes' or 'now'...or 'I do...absolutely...want you'...but it seems...I too...have failed you...in the end...

“I'm... _so_ sorry...James...”


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I Wake In Pain  
> I Dream Of Love As Time Runs Through My Hands 
> 
> (Desert Rose by Sting)

It was Loki's seemingly inexhaustible supply of unwarranted good luck that nobody in Midgard actually knew a damn thing about Jotun biology. About how a large part of why Loki ate so much was to keep his body temperature high enough to pass for human if touched. About how a mentally, spiritually, or physically wounded Jotun could drop into a sort of light hibernation state, called 'brumation' by those who studied reptiles that often did something very similar. About how a wounded, healing, half-hibernating Jotun would seem dead by mortal measures, skin cold and joints stiff and no perceptible heartbeat or breathing.

And that was how he came to himself alone in a very small room, laid on his back on what he could only assume from the accoutrements and other furnishings was an autopsy table. Thankfully, thinking him dead, they hadn't strapped him down or even bothered to try sedation. He was smart enough to make his study of the room through slitted eyelids in case of cameras. There was one, on the wall, but it didn't move and no lights were on, so he suspected it would only be used while the room was occupied by bodies they were sure were alive. Getting the hell out into who knew what kind of nightmare the place really turned out to be was an increasingly urgent priority, but before he had the chance to open his eyes he heard the door hinges squeak.

Whoever had come in had done so very quietly; Loki could only barely hear them moving once the doorknob had clicked back to shut. When they got close enough, though, he knew perfectly well who it was by their unique scent. _James, oh I am so, so **sorry** James..._

_Nobody else calls me that, not since I got out of the war in Europe. Masters like mine don't name their hunting hounds, and now I'm considered too dangerous for anything less than a trio of handlers per mission so they can discourage such fondnesses in each other. I didn't trust you to be as dead as you looked._ Somehow, Loki managed to remain still.

_And yet I'd wager you came to say goodbye to what even you thought was a carcass._

_That is correct. You are the only person in my life to mean an apology to me other than Steve, and even his were false more often than not. If I was wrong and you were gone, leaving that farewell unsaid would have put an exploitable chink in my internal armor. Not a good thing to have when your **masters** wear Hydra insignia_. That answered one of Loki's lingering questions—Barnes absolutely remembered telling the other man the difference between handlers and employers, and Loki clearly felt him react to 'masters' the same way he had to 'handlers'.

_Is that why you brought back the bond? How the fuck did you do that, anyway? How did you break it in the first place? The library I learned in is thousands of your years old and I never once found mention of any but the weaver being able to sever that cord._

_I never broke it, Loki. I only manipulated it. It's like the kind of telephone line I grew up knowing a little about even if the expense would have been wildly out of reach in the days before the big war, what they call a land line nowadays. Used to be if you took your headset off the body of the phone, it'd make this damn annoying beeping if you forgot to unplug it...but no one could call in. All I did was generate static and then dead air like pulling the connector on a land line; the line was always still there even if only one side knew that and neither could use it until I fixed my end. I have always known at least roughly where you were during this time apart, and that bond is how I found you when ordered to use any means at my disposal. I was wise to watch you so much more closely than that job required, to learn from you how to hide secrets and make an outrageous lie look and feel like truth. It's been **very** tricky to keep from Hydra that so much of me is still yours no matter how your spurning hurt._ An edge, sharper than any ice could be honed to, on those last six words cut at Loki deeply and precisely.

_That was an accident, James, entirely my fault. A **terrible** mistake, one of my worst. As I said, springing from my own hesitation. Hesitation from fear, based on the fact that affection given has always brought me agony in return. Based on the fact that I spent a thousand years learning to love a family I now know was never my own, that secret kept by all of them on the command of a false father who stole me to use as a political tool in his own brand of bullying disguised as diplomacy. A family who would still put me in solitary confinement for the rest of my life in the dungeons under the throne room if I tried to return to them and succeeded. And they still wonder to this very day where I learned to lie or why I thought I had reason in the first place aside from just being a difficult child with a bratty temperament...but I have never willingly lied to you, James. Nor wanted to start._

_Why then do you flinch from me that way, feel the way you do inside, every time you say my name?_

_Because until I am sure of your intentions, I'm suspicious of the chances of you breaking my neck for my temerity in using it at all after how I've wounded you. Oh, but you can't do that, can you? You'd have told them you throttled me, and a broken neck won't match your story. They'd torture the truth out of you if you didn't just hand it to them whole, or if you tried and weren't believed. Maybe kill you themselves if they think you harbor deceit._

_There is that. If I'm even caught here they'll wipe me clean instead of trusting me as they did when I returned of my own will and only 'Ya gotov otvechat' was enough to keep my heart beating._ He flinched, just the barest hint of a wince, when his mention of that decision had him feeling Loki's despair, anguish, and emotional gutting. It took all he had not to recoil again when he recognized the void behind those emotions and realized what he was about to be asked a thin second before the words slithered into his thoughts.

_Do us both a favor, my sweet lost James, one you know will bring us both peace enough. You know how easily my throat will crush under either of your hands to match your report. I'd...very much rather not be **alive** when they start cutting._

The Winter Soldier approached slowly, and he did ever so gently wrap that prosthetic hand over its own bruise still printed into Loki's long neck. When it did not tighten, the exile and captive finally risked opening his eyes. The Soldier had his back to the camera in case it got remotely activated, and for good reason. The grey-blue gaze Loki's eyes found immediately was all James, starting with the fact that it was awash in tears the Winter Soldier would never understand, much less shed.

_We are not as far from an unguarded exit as they think. You are so right to believe that I do not enjoy serving **masters** , trickster. I would much rather have an employer if you're willing to let me break orders that you may **live**. I spent nearly every waking moment between my first wet dream and the day I fell off Zola's train learning better and better every day how to hide what I felt for someone who may or may not have ever returned it. I can be a highly effective employee without having to bother you about **feelings**._ The contempt in his final sentence, aimed inward at Barnes's cold-cloaked heart, nearly made Loki flinch even though he was still attempting to play dead.

_But that is the problem entire, James. I'm very sure I had feelings of an exquisitely bothersome nature. I think from the things you've said to me that you did too. Mine remain as thorny around my heart as the moment before I failed you. I know for myself that I cannot take you back as a bodyguard and **not** want you for a lover. I'd rather be dead, **Soldat** , and if I must die for letting you down so terribly it's only fitting that it happen quite literally by your hand. And I suspect we are fast running out of time in which to decide what you will do with that hand._ Which was still around his throat, though lightly, the pressure of his grip never changing as Loki blew their cover by sitting up.

And which, when it moved at its owner's command, still did not tighten as it drew them closer. _One would think you'd have figured out by now,_ and Barnes grinned briefly before their mouths met, _how much time I've **already** spent trying to lure you in to be a lover, not just the only employer I have ever enjoyed...in any way._ The kiss was brief but intense, and the bond fairly hummed audibly with the powerful emotions coursing both ways in flares and surges. _Promise me one favor, one I am sure is yours to grant, and I will rip through every wall and weapon and soldier they throw at us on our way out. Just one thing. No tricks, no deceit, not even any magic._

_And what might that one thing be?_ Now the Soldier backed off, and for a few heartbeats only James still shone from his eyes and bearing.

_Don't ever call me **Soldat** again. I hate it so much. The Winter Soldier belongs to Hydra and always has—they're the bastards who built him out of me, after all. Being your James is something I would gladly do until one of us finally dies. Being their **Soldat** makes me want to die._

_Then please, my James, do your best to get us out of here alive. Once I figure out how they've muzzled my magics I will do everything I can to keep us safe. Until then, that safety can be your job._

_Understood...sir._ The faint quirk of a swift grin was the only warning Loki got before Barnes was in efficient, effective motion, starting their unsubtle escape by ripping the locked door out of its frame with a bellow like an angry rodeo bull. And it was immediately apparent that the magic had not been muzzled; Loki had simply been too exhausted by the workings of his own metabolism to reach those reservoirs but luckily—again with that luck—he was still fast, agile, and strong enough to put a couple of swiped knives James tossed his way after checking some bodies to some very extensive use himself. They left behind them corridors full of corpses, rooms with arterial spray decorating the walls, and a liberal sprinkling of both bullet holes and scorch marks on pretty much everything.

But they left together.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Is It Over Now  
> And Do You Know How  
> To Pick Up The Pieces And Go Home 
> 
> (Gold Dust Woman by Fleetwood Mac)

“We can't use any of the open safe houses, but I know of a couple that were listed as unusable. There's one about a day's hike from here.”

“Where the unholy fuck is _here_ , anyway?” Loki wondered.

“The Yukon.” Which meant that the coniferous forest they were in probably did stretch for days in all directions, but it also meant few roads, a literal wilderness of heavy cover to hide in, and the high likelihood of wild game. “All right, let's get going. Orloff was right, I could really use a meal.” That got him a sharp look. “Yeah, I wasn't big on taking care of myself after showing you coward's colors when you needed something very different from me. It's been a while since I gave a damn about eating more than bare survival rations.”

“I'm a **sniper** , sir. As soon as we see an animal, I'll have us a meal.” That one word, three tiny letters, came with a sidelong look and a slow grin. All three bolstered Loki immensely...he actually had grown to miss the way James said 'sir'.

Not twenty minutes later, a very careful shot from Barnes's favorite pistol, his original Army-issue M1911A1 sidearm, downed a yearling buck at well over two hundred yards. Loki watched in fear-tinged fascination as the soldier efficiently hung, gutted, and skinned the deer, but set to helping using his own small collection of favorite blades hidden in just about everything he wore to begin taking the buck apart. When they left their campsite several days later, they'd used the dried hide to wrap up piles of the jerky they'd made from everything they didn't eat...and most of a couple of hopeful scavengers who'd proven too bold in their attempts to raid the drying racks. Loki now had reason to know that bear was greasy, and deer tasted fantastic any way they'd tried it, but he wasn't particularly fond of the flavor of coyote roasted over a low open flame.

They found the safe house easily enough, and it was vacant. Loki checked it over using his magic and was able to neutralize all the usual booby traps. Barnes picked the lock, and they spent their first hour together under a decent roof since that awful night at the hotel split between stoking the stove, clearing food in various states of inedibility out of the kitchen, and stowing their prodigious supply of bear meat, the coyote James had no qualms about eating, and venison. Afterward, Loki decided it was past time to see if any of the plumbing still worked; the system was intact but with the electricity turned off and no helping that until Barnes could do some sneaky wiring come morning, it took a zap of magic to heat the contents of the water heater as close to boiling as possible without making the damn thing explode.

He kept the shower water on the cool side, partly to conserve the heated water until he'd had a solid meal or two to bolster his reserves and partly because their limited diet while on the run had caused his metabolism to sacrifice keeping him warm to the touch. Hot water would have felt like being boiled alive, felt like the torture he'd undergone before being allowed to paw at the Tesseract like an overconfident child. Just feeling the sweat and blood and grime of their escape and travels being swept away was hedonistic enough for Loki to fail to pay his usual attention to his immediate surroundings.

When he cleared his eyes and turned to see if there was any soap handy he could use on the tragedy currently known as his hair, Barnes handed him a small chunk. Then, while Loki tried to remember to shut his mouth and lather his hair, his companion slid past to occupy the spray. The moan from James as he started to finally feel clean again after far too long had some possibly intentional side effects.

_Not the most dignified reaction I could have hoped for, James. Are you being deliberately difficult?_

_Neither the shower nor the bed I plan to try talking you into with me the moment we're dry enough for your tastes has a damn thing to do with dignity, boss. And you ought to have figured out by now you'll probably be doing that every time we're both naked in the same room._ 'Doing that', in this case, meant standing there with no way to hide the hard-on. And Barnes, for all that he made no mention of it, had the same problem but refused to care about modesty or dignity when all he still wanted was so close to in hand. _So no, not deliberately difficult. Just apparently my personal baseline difficult. Hand over the soap._

While James washed after Loki had rinsed and bailed, both kept their thoughts quiet. There was no keeping quiet the surge through the bond when Barnes left the bathroom to find Loki sprawled on the bed rather than retreated to the fireplace. And naked when clothing would have kept him distinctly warmer. His dick had faded back to soft while he'd very nearly fallen asleep in even a short wait, but that changed almost the moment the other man laid a hand on him, sitting Loki up and himself down, burying his right hand in that black hair and leaning in.

James was an excellent kisser, leaving Loki hard again in about three slow breaths before using his greater mass to push the slimmer man flat onto his back. When he pulled away just long enough to settle himself comfortably, Barnes saw something needful and longing flick through the other man's leaf-green eyes.

“What is it you need?” he asked softly, his right hand starting to move on that pale skin, tracing the paths of muscle and bone along Loki's front. Both gooseflesh and streaks of swift-fading Jotun blue trailed occasionally in his wake. Both seemed to fascinate him equally.

“I—I'm, well...not _great_ at trusting people. I'm not sure how, and I think it might **actually** kill me to make such a mistake with you again should I fail to learn fast enough. Should I fail you again.”

“Can't have that,” the brawny man chuckled, his wandering hand stealing Loki's voice when it started playing with his cock as if they'd always been lovers, somehow knowing all the right strokes and twists and pauses. _Trust me all you want, all you can on any given day,_ Barnes used the bond to say when he couldn't make himself leave off letting his tongue start to learn the other man's skin long enough to speak aloud. It didn't take long for his attentions to steal all hope of self-control right along with Loki's voice. _Take the time you need. Find the ways that work. I'll know if I hit a boundary with you, if it's time to slow down, if we need to stop. And don't try to do it all in one great leap off a cliff hoping you'll learn to fly before you hit the ground. You won't, and it'd be a bad, bad landing. Trust for the likes of us needs to be built slowly. At least we're way the hell and gone out in the country with no neighbors to snoop or...overhear._

Before Loki could question that phrasing, the hand on his dick was replaced by the other's mouth, all slick honesty and delightful heat and the confidence of experience. When Loki understood at last the real importance of that last word, he stopped trying to stifle the loud, genuine, and wildly varied noises he'd forgotten he no longer had to try keeping inside his heaving chest. Barnes kept at him without mercy until Loki came with an actual scream; the soldier still whispering in the back of his head about bad strategy was finally in agreement with the rest of James about one thing. No more chances were taken on getting interrupted before that glorious moment when Loki's high-arched spine dropped him back onto the bed to feel his own sweat cooling and his heart rate easing even as he surfaced from the mental white noise caused by a massive endorphin rush.

When Barnes stretched out alongside, he made a soft blissful sound at the first gentle sweep of the other man's open hand across most of his chest—clear of the scarring though, and he could feel just fine that it was worry over sensitivity rather than any distaste guiding that route. James finally banished the babbling soldier from his mind, at least for the night he hoped, under the slow exploration he had forgotten, honestly this time, how much he enjoyed. Although he sank beautifully into bliss, leaning into many ever-less-cautious caresses, it wasn't until those long strong hands started playing, with one on his painfully hard cock and the other in his dark-brown hair, that Barnes's own voice broke loose in a long, quiet, lusty moan.

“So, **my** James, what is it _you_ want?”

“Everything. Anything you'll give me, any time you'll go there. You know I'm not fragile, Loki. I am **your** James, the man my free will has chosen, and there's not going to be much difference to me in the joy your touch brings, how good your hands feel right now, and how it might actually feel to be brave enough to _take_ you, to _fuck_ you until you can't even scream any more, until we find out if coming inside you might make me call you 'sir' in a scream of my own.”

Under more normal circumstances, Loki was very much an alpha male unless playing a role for the sake of profiteering or a plan. Between his recent stresses and how wildly horny both men had gotten while getting themselves out of that latest mess, though, circumstances were rarely less normal. Loki found himself, when he had the mental resources to think coherently again, both proud of and surprised at James—and not because he had been brave enough to end their night exactly as he'd said. The way he had indeed screamed that 'sir' when he came wasn't the source of those reactions, though it was certainly something Loki was never going to forget watching and hearing from astride his James, any more than he would forget the first time in a very long time he'd had a male lover not absolutely terrified to see his response to the hot shock of having another man come inside him.

No, the surprise and pride came from the fact that nothing he felt of Barnes through that bond changed in the least when the feel of eventually taking him all the way in had caused Loki to briefly flush Jotun blue all over before he could even manage verbal coherence of any kind. Even just a low and breathy “ _Ohhh, my James..._ ” was all he could manage in the aftermath, and then the heat and pressure inside changed to motion and friction and that pretty much undid Loki's intent to make the former soldier take him slowly if at all.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I Feel The Heat  
> Of Your Heartbeat  
> Echo In My Head Like A Scream  
> What You Do To Me 
> 
> (Jet City Woman by Queensryche)

“One of these days we should consider acquiring other hobbies,” Loki mused once they'd both caught their breath. “What do you think, my James?” These days, their preferred home base was a sprawling estate in the temperate rain forest of the Olympic Peninsula. They had a backup not far away, further into the mountains and at a higher elevation, for when summer got too muggy for Loki.

“I've actually been thinking about exactly that, sir. I know what I plan to do, a couple of things actually. Legitimate things, even. Should be able to take care of most of the prep for both from here, but some stuff I'll have to leave to do.”

“Mmmhmm, you can keep that going,” Loki murmured into the start of a languid afterglow backrub, and his James chuckled softly. “What do you have in mind?”

“First of all I want to learn to cook. Like, five-star-kitchen level cooking. I might not enjoy having my left hand sit on a hot grill or stovetop, but it won't melt the metal, plus I'm good enough with knives I might even try fugu someday.” That would be a hell of a trick—Loki had spent enough time skulking around Japan to know exactly what the other man meant. He had complete confidence that when the day rolled in, he'd be enjoying a rare delicacy without having to worry about the side effects of tetrodotoxin—it wouldn't kill him, but he'd encountered it on more than one covert mission and it did make him sick as all hell for a couple of days. “And I was thinking of growing a lot of my own ingredients in a greenhouse that will double as a shed for a snake venom farm.”

“A _what_?” Loki yelped, rolling up onto his side to lift an eyebrow and study James's expression.

“Exactly what it sounds like. Raising venomous tropical snakes to collect their venom and sell it to antivenom producers and pharmaceutical research labs. We already know I'm poison-resistant across the board, and once again having a prosthetic arm will be a huge help because nothing can envenomate metal. You'll be safe enough around them; you're probably venom-resistant with snakes too and all the vipers I'm interested in hunt by heat signature so you'll register as too cold to care about and too big to eat. The pay's good, the hours will be my own to set, and there's not a shitload of competition out there like there would be opening a restaurant, which is why I plan to keep the five-star gourmet cooking for home, just for us.”

“Great. Elegant dining and poisonous pets. You seem to be the creative one, tell me what you can see me doing for a hobby while you're so occupied.” Barnes snorted and grinned wickedly.

“Learn guitar. You already act like a prima donna rock star, so you might as well be one. And thanks to the internet, you'd never have to even consider touring. God knows you'll have more groupies than He does, and I am including the entire Catholic world population in that estimate.”

“You are **so** weird, you Midgardian jackass.”

“Careful...” It had turned out Barnes had a very short recharge interval and some exquisitely weird little kinks. The currently-smirking exile had actually had a lot more fun finding those kinks than he or James had expected.

“Of what, my darlin' nutbag?”

“ _Loki..._ ” It was a low warning growl.

“I can see it now. It'll be so grand! We'll stuff your shirt, pad your hips, and pretend you're a female bodybuilder so we can call you the neighborhood's crazy snake lady wherever we end up living unless you can keep tropical snakes alive here.”

Another growl, this one wordless. Loki knew exactly what he was doing. And that it was working. One more, just **one** more casually gentle insult ought to do it, and the funnier he could make it the harder his James would fall right over the edge of his own self-control...

“Ooh! I'll have to get you an apron and have 'Hiss The Cook' stitched on the front! You can wear it if we ever have enough friends to throw a barbecue. It'll be fucking _adorable_.” The next thing out of Loki's mouth wasn't a word either, though it had a lot to do with getting shoved back over onto his belly and mounted in one slow, perfect surge from above and behind. The heavier man dropped onto his elbows, braced his knees, and clamped his teeth in the side of his lover's long neck. Then he just made sure to stay in that mutual favorite position, giving slender Loki oh so much wiggle room under him, moaning into that black hair hotter and hotter as Loki rocked himself back on Barnes's cock with increasing enthusiasm and noise. This was one of the uncommon days when they called it 'fucking like lions'...never for long, this time included, but they'd never bothered to try counting how many times a day they could enjoy when they ran that particular sort of hot.

“You better start those cooking classes soon if you're going to keep letting your kinks interrupt every adult discussion we attempt to start. I'm starving...actually, I was starving _before_ you pounced on me again. We are not doing anything else but shower between now and fucking well **feed** me before I pass out, James.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

They ran through a quick shower and ate a large meal comprised mostly of assorted leftovers because even Barnes didn't have the energy to cook anything fresh. When they'd both nearly cleared their plates, Loki knew about half a second in advance that the other man's curiosity was engaged about something and his James was about to ask.

“So, what is it you can only get from me, boss? Every other man I've known with a temperament anything like yours has been an absolute tomcat. You seem happy with just me.”

“Only from you?” Loki snorted softly, his grin soft and eyes warm for a rare change. “Only _everything_ you are, my James. Brave, unique, smart, loyal, and beautiful for starters. That wicked sense of humor you don't let out often enough. Your wisdom about boundaries. Never having to worry about doing you serious damage no matter my mood or intentions.”

“Speaking of intentions, anyone but you and I'm pretty sure I'd be accusing them of trying to flatter their way into a blowjob by now.”

“My flattery is honest for once, although I must say I'd be an idiot to turn you down if you do happen to want to put that mouth of yours on offer.” The warmth stayed in his eyes, but the grin was full of sharp teeth again. They shortly cleared the dishes with swift efficiency—and sixty seconds after the table was emptied into the dishwasher, James had shoved Loki gently up against the counter, hitting his knees and managing to both unzip and peel down his lover's jeans on his way down. Once again, Barnes was immediately grateful for his lack of a gag reflex. Once again, Loki was grateful that nothing about his tendency to flush Jotun blue when particularly aroused bothered the other man in the least.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do I Touch The Way  
> You Want To Be Touched  
> Have You Heard The Words  
> You Wanted To Hear  
> Is My Body Heat  
> The Right Intensity 
> 
> (I Do What I Do by John Taylor, 9 ½ Weeks soundtrack)

Loki had taken other backup this time, as he had a long round of meetings, glad-handing, and assorted political fuckery to deal with, nothing that required his head of security. Barnes still refused both rank and pay raise, telling Loki this time that he'd be fine staying at home with his first few snakes. They'd just arrived and he was trying very hard to sound out their temperaments and get them eating properly.

“That looks like one helluva rough day I see all over your expression. Sir.”

“Surrounded by _morons_ and I still had to concede to playing catch in a couple of areas where I'd really prefer to be pitching.” Yep, bitchy and sharp and snappy, exactly what James had expected from the look on his lover's face.

“Am I in for a rough night?” he teased casually, well aware of how inciting lust with Loki in this kind of mood tended to end.

“Touch me and I'll be on you like a straitjacket made out of low-grit sandpaper. You're probably better off trying to cuddle up to one of your little scaly nightmares.”

“Ooh, boss, **such** promises,” James purred sweetly. “Think I can piss you off enough to get bitten back?” For someone who so enjoyed the feel of teeth on his own skin, Loki rarely returned that particular attention.

“You're at least halfway there just for keeping this conversation going, snake bait.” Provoked as he always was by such mellowly insulting chatter, Barnes retaliated by taking a cat-quick swat through the long back of Loki's hair. The reaction that temerity got him was fast, much faster than Loki usually moved at home.

James let a low moan roll quietly from his throat when his spine hit the wall to stop the momentum of a hard shove. This was actually familiar foreplay, and the grin he gave Loki was his well understood permission to take such physical liberties. And the first time anything of Loki's got in range—like the soft skin on the inside of one of his long forearms—his favorite bodyguard risked a swift, sharp nip.

Barnes nearly melted into the wall, his moans going breathy with the kind of lust that obliterated all other concerns, when Loki snapped right back, nailing the side of his thick neck harder than either had actually expected. The surge of pain through their ever-stronger bond almost broke the mood, largely because his boss still had exceptionally _sharp_ teeth.

But then his right hand whipped up to catch Loki's chin in an unkind grip. “'Ouch' is **not** a safeword and you know it, sir,” he purred yet again, knowing the slow rumble was working its ways on his lover's nerves as he pulled Loki close enough for a deep kiss...and James wasn't at all squeamish, not even over the taste of his own blood in the other man's mouth. He also knew that particular quirk of tolerance drove his lover right out of control and found himself in exactly the right kind of mood to handle Loki's ferociously lust-driven response.

Loki was _plenty_ pissed off enough about a lot of things to concede and start taking his frustration out biting back. Knowing how he was likely to react, Barnes had locked most of the servos in his left hand so he wouldn't get distracted and break bone with it—one fuckup like that had been the only lesson he'd needed, and it had been learned long before he'd met the trickster. In the end, it certainly wasn't the first time by now that he'd made his beloved James actually **scream** that 'sir'.

It _was_ the first time the marks of Loki's hard, sharp teeth took three entire days to vanish.

It took a lot longer for any mention of that night to stop causing Barnes to get hard before the end of the first sentence. And he was stuck pretty much forever having to fake disinterest every time Loki was feeling snippy and decided to pick on his favorite bodyguard by calling him 'snake bait' in public where they did not allow the true nature of their relationship to be obvious.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pull Me Under  
> I Am Not Afraid 
> 
> (Pull Me Under by Dream Theater)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of Bucky's snakes are:
> 
> Atheris nitschei  
> Bothriechis aurifer  
> Trimeresurus gunaleni  
> Trimeresurus sumatranus malcolmi  
> Tropidolaemus wagleri

They'd finally just finished the last time any of the biggest snakes would need to be handled for the week, and the mid-size category weren't getting milked until the next week, so the two settled for a coffee break among the herbs, fruits, vegetables, and racks of habitat enclosures. James had been careful, finicky even, about his collection, and Loki had noticed something that about eighty percent of the current reptiles had in common.

“You look smug,” Barnes grinned, keeping a casual eye on a very young viper currently enjoying the fact that his prosthetic hand could heat or cool itself on command and the setting was currently just the right temperature. The snake was a tiny thing, small enough all wadded up and warm like that to barely span his entire palm. Before Loki could answer, a ringtone went off. James cautiously hustled the snake into a temporary container before answering with a surprisingly perky “CFS Exotics.” Loki just casually watched, enjoying his grace as he spent the call meandering around the room to check on the other snakes. “Oh, Doctor Mueller, I was hoping to hear from you! Yes, yes, she got here in perfect condition. She's eating just fine and I'm hoping to ship her first batch of crystallized venom in the next couple of days. No, haven't seen one of _those_ come up for sale lately, but if I find any I'll be sure to give them some solid consideration. Talk to you soon, Doc.” Grinning again, he put away first the phone and then the snake.

“So, I look...smug?”

“Yup, definitely the look of a man who's figured out something all on his own.”

“Don't be an asshole, James.”

“Don't bait me until I have time to make you pay for it, Loki.”

“Fine, you herp hugger.”

“ **Loki**...”

“I can't help notice a strong preponderance of...tri-colored...snakes all around the room.”

“I wondered when you'd catch on. But I still have the drop on you because you haven't figured out the name of the business yet.”

“Do I at least get points for the color scheme?”

“Since they're all _your_ favorites, I **should** say no.” Loki had him dead to rights on the colors, though. Most of the vipers were some combination of green, black, and vivid yellow. There were nearly two dozen by now, and Barnes did most of the work and all of the planning related to their housing, care, and earning their keep surrendering venom on command. He was hoping to breed a few sets, but other than anything requested by a customer on his A-list he wasn't looking too hard for new additions. “Since you're my favorite flavor of cold-blooded poison, though, I won't.”

“Now you have me curious enough to just ask—what does the name stand for, anyway?”

James got up again, walking to stand behind the other man's chair, the slow stroke of his right hand over glossy black hair enough to get Loki's head tilted back, eyes shut as he leaned into his lover's belly and smiled quietly. “The C is for crown, like the golden one you should have been wearing by either birth or adoption. The F is for fields, the same shade of spring grass as your eyes, where sometimes dangerous things do hide in both places. And the S is for the night sky which, like the fields, your lost crowns should have given you dominion over. I specify the night sky because I know you prefer it to day. And being black and spangled in stars, it matches most of the snakes' patterns, which is nice too.”

“That's...weirdly sweet, my James. I don't think I've ever heard of something so beloved being named after anything about me outside Scandinavia.”

“Your false family should have known you better, and your blood should never have turned their backs. They should have been able to see how to coax the glory out of you without making you sacrifice your private heart. I'm glad I do know you better, that I got to be the one lucky enough to learn to actually understand a few things about who you really are. The loss never felt by the rulers of two Realms has become what keeps me fighting the old programming still.”

Never opening his eyes, Loki set a hand over the one still in his hair. Barnes felt a weird prickle and warmth before noticing that the hand over his was glowing faintly green. He didn't fight this the way he did his own mind, though, where not so very long ago he would've been tempted to leave again without a further word no matter how deep he'd sunk his stakes this time.

“So what was that?” he asked when the glow and the accompanying sensations faded.

“I've left you all the deep dark places you really must clear out on your own, but you've worked more than long and hard enough on your own to deserve having some of the minor clutter swept away.”

For that, where it once would have been such a violation that he'd have killed by reflex, James just balanced on the arm of the big, sturdy chair, tilting Loki's chin up to meet him for a slow, mellow kiss. “I'm glad we managed to stumble into trusting one another at least enough,” Barnes finally rumbled when he drew back. “Steve was my first love, my best friend, and tried his best to be a good man, but a life with him would have been very different even if I'd made it home with him from the war. Very different even if we'd spent enough times awake in **this** century to build a more open life than the Forties would have required. But he'd probably have insisted on running a dog rescue, and after all my time with Hydra I understand cold blood far better than hot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There. All 17 chapters! To borrow a highly relevant Loki quote:
> 
> "Ta-daa!"
> 
> And I still have time to pack for 3 days out of town, which trip dusts off in about two hours.


End file.
